


Marlboro Reds

by geektastic



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: M/M, Re-Education, angst-ish, but cecil and carlos are still a good couple, but not like terrible sadness porn angsty, cecilos - Freeform, characters just turn up with injuries, cw smoking, ish, like realistic depiction of a relationship in a high-stress and dangerous environment???, night vale is not a good place to live, no actual violence depicted in the fic however, smoking kink perverted to overly emotional purposes?????, smoking kink??????, the abuse mention being the re-education, tw abuse mention, tw blood, tw injury, well no it's angsty, wtnv - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-16
Updated: 2014-04-16
Packaged: 2018-01-19 15:08:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1474249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/geektastic/pseuds/geektastic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which living in Night Vale is not pleasant, working towards the revolution comes at a cost, and sometimes having each other is only just enough.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Marlboro Reds

**Author's Note:**

> tw injury, tw blood, tw abuse mention. All of this is in the context of being comforted after the fact, no acts of violence themselves are depicted.

Carlos was alone in the bed when he woke up. He frowned for just a moment, before he heard yesterday's weather drifting from the kitchen on Cecil's moderately tuneful baritone. He stretched out lazily, enjoying the brief decadence of having the entire double bed to himself – free from the machinations of a serial duvet-thief. Carlos was still getting used to sharing his space. Cecil just took up _so much space._ The singing trailed off as Cecil came back into the bedroom, carrying two cups of coffee. His violet eyes hit the air before him with force, and matching violet dreads pulled up into a scrunchie spilled out into the air behind him. 

“I'm thinking since there's almost nothing life-threatening happening in town today, we should take advantage of both having the day off.” he said, putting Carlos's coffee on the bedside table next to him “Take a picnic to Mission Grove Park or something. The carnivorous daffodils are really nice this time of year – provided you don't get to close, of course.” His free hand makes spacious and intricate patterns while he talks, tracing the swells and curls of his expressive voice. Carlos is used to empty rooms and extended silences. He'd developed a cheerfully compatible relationship with the calm white noise of his own existence, and Cecil – Cecil was taking some getting used to.

Carlos blearily pulled himself up to sitting and reached for the coffee, clasping it carefully between both sleep-muddled hands and holding it in front of his lips for a moment, letting the biting black smell coax him properly awake. His brain belatedly caught up with the fact that Cecil had finished what he'd been saying with “what do you think?” And was now waiting for a reply.

“ _Perdón_ ,” Carlos mumbled. It came out strange and strangled in a voice that hadn't been used yet today. He cleared his throat and tried again: “Sorry, I'm not quite … I'm not, quite.”

“I shouldn't try and talk to you until you've had your coffee, should I?”

“No.”

Cecil laughed and kissed him on the cheek, before settling back into the pillows with his own coffee. “I got impatient waiting for you to wake up,” he said “I just had one those mornings when you wake up stupidly early and, boom, you're awake, you know?”

Carlos had never experienced a morning like the one Cecil was describing, but was vaguely aware that other people had, so he mumbled something agreeable. If he'd been processing a little more speedily it might have occurred to him that given how entirely  _not a morning person_ Cecil was, this amount of perky chatter at –  _christ –_ eight o'clock on a Sunday morning was probably a sign that something was wrong. But he wasn't, and it didn't. Cecil picked up his pack of Malboro reds and flicked it open, pulling one out between his lips so he didn't have to set his coffee down. Carlos glared at him as the lighter flared. Cecil tossed the lighter down onto the bed and smiled right back at Carlos's glare, inhaling deeply. 

“Mmm, tasty nicotine.” He said, taunting the disapproving scientist. Carlos shrugged with entirely unconvincingly feigned nonchalance.

“Your funeral.”

Cecil rolled his eyes and blew a small, perfectly circular, smoke ring.

“You know, statistically, I'm more likely to be swallowed by the howling void on my way to work than I am to contract lung cancer.”

“I thought Station Management had an agreement with the howling void not to consume you while your still under contract with NVCR?”

“Well, okay, I, personally, am not. But, a person, statistically. You know what I mean.” He flicked loose ash into the large, crudely bedazzled seashell that served as his ashtray and took a long sip of black coffee. The secret, that Carlos would never, ever tell Cecil, was that he actually found the smoking a little bit sexy. There was just something about the tendrils of smoke spilling lazily from his lover's lips that carried the undeniable pull of eroticism. But also terribly unhealthy and  _not_ to be encouraged at all, so he carefully retained a stern expression, even while he enjoyed watching Cecil taking lazy sips of smoke. 

 

*****

 

Carlos was alone in the bed when he woke up. Night Vale had been  _particularly_ Night Vale that day, and he'd stumbled through the door in the early evening nursing multiple lacerations from an escaped librarian, mild head trauma from an altercation with one of the fanged, eight-legged spider-wolves that had turned up in the labs, and a lingering sense of dread mixed with the hopelessness of seeping, grey, ennui that had been caused by a localised thunderstorm in which the heavy raindrops smelled faintly of blood and were cursed. He'd crashed into bed fully clothed and woke with a start in exactly the same position, face-down on top of the duvet. Glowing digital numbers were the only light in the room. According to them, he'd been asleep for five hours - which may have been true. He was definitely experiencing the weird, dislocated feeling of a person who's been asleep for several hours in completely the wrong part of the day. But if it  _was_ true, that meant Cecil should already be home. 

Carlos heaved himself inelegantly off the bed and walked through into the living room. Flicking on the light just made it even more obviously empty and silent. He tried to ignore the anxious tightening in his stomach as he switch on the radio. The dead air silence filled the room with a static undertone, which was then punctured by a woman's voice delivering a sequence of meaningless syllables in a hushed, reverential tone. There was no reason to panic, Cecil might have just gotten caught up in the office. He pulled his phone from his pocket and found Cecil's number. Maybe it wasn't that late, maybe time had slipped loose again and the hours that he'd felt like he'd been sleeping here simply hadn't occurred yet at the radio station. The phone rang for much longer than Carlos wanted it to, and he tried very hard not to think about the kind of things that 'getting caught up in the office' usually involved for Cecil.

_“Hi! You've reached Cecil. I can't get to the phone right now. Maybe I'm on air. Maybe I'm grappling with my own imminent demise. Maybe I'm not bothering to pick up because I don't want to here any more of your ridiculous anti-government conspiracy stories,_ Steve _. Anyway, leave a message and if I'm still alive I'm sure I'll get back to you. Unless you're Steve Carlsberg. In which case, just hang up, ugh, no-one wants to hear from_ you,  _Steve.”_

Carlos stood frozen for a moment, recording seconds of silence after the bleep. Then, with a sudden start, he flew to the door and wrenched it open, taking the stairs to the street two steps at a time. His feet had barely hit the concrete before Cecil's car pulled round the corner. He couldn't see Cecil himself behind the glare of headlights, but the sight of the car was enough to loose the anxious knot that had jumped into his throat. He leant against the door-frame behind him, feeling his heartbeat begin to subside as Cecil parked in the space behind his own silver hybrid.

“Ugh, am I glad to see you,” Cecil slammed the car door a little harder than it needed before walking over to Carlos and resting his forehead on the scientist's shoulder. “One of those days, you know?”

“You had me worried when you didn't pick up your phone.” Carlos said into Cecil's hair.

“I threw it at Station Management. Didn't help. Possibly made things worse.”

“They left their office?”

“We built a barricade in the break room out of some chairs and a vending machine. Waited it out. I've been snacking on Cheez-Its all night and I feel like a fat lump.”

With Cecil safely in his arms and relief flooding through him, Carlos smiled.

“You're a very cute lump.” He said, and lifted Cecil's chin gently up to kiss him on the nose. Getting his first proper look at Carlos, Cecil frowned deeply.

“What happened to you?”

“What – oh. I kind of had one of those days, too.”

“Was it anything serious? Does it hurt? Have you sterilised these scratches?”

“Not really; not really; and, uh, not really.”

Cecil chittered like a disapproving hen. The adrenaline had seeped entirely out of Carlos's bones now, and the vague sleep-drunkness of waking up in entirely the wrong part of the day was settling back in. He allowed himself to be ferried up the stairs and left on the couch while Cecil dug their first aid box out of the bathroom cupboard. Carlos finally pulled off his labcoat, and unbuttoned the shirt underneath that, frowning at the bloody tears decorating the right sleeve of each.

Cecil sat down next to Carlos on the couch with one leg curled up under him and the first aid box resting lopsided between his other thigh and the crook of his knee. He pulled Carlos's shirt off slowly, carefully pulling the fabric out of the congealed blood at each wound one by one. The only sounds were Carlos's sharp hissed breaths every time the stinging sterile cream touched the narrow red gouges in his arm, and Cecil's sympathetic _'tch'_ they drew in response each time.

When it was done, Carlos took the box from him and dumped it on the floor, before leaning forward and placing a gentle kiss on his lips.

“Happy?”

“Happier.”

“Stay right there.”

Carlos stood gingerly, the creaking of aching joints very nearly audible. He walked to the kitchen with the injured arm held stiffly, slightly out from his torso, trying to avoid touching the wounds. Cecil allowed himself to relax back into the sofa, pulling his keys, wallet, cigarettes and lighter from his pocket. The keys and wallet were tossed onto the coffee table, but the cigarette packet he flicked open, pulling one out with a habitual flick of tongue and teeth. Returning with two glasses and a bottle of Cecil's favourite well-aged whisky, Carlos couldn't be bothered even frowning over the bad habit. He just sat down next to him and poured two glasses. It may not have been a bad enough day by Night Vale standards to invoke drinking to forget, but it had definitely been bad enough to earn a drink.

The tendrils of cigarette smoke loosened themselves into the air, mixing with the amber tang of Whisky settling into the back of Carlos's tongue and the warmth of Cecil's legs, slung over his own to stretch the length of the couch. It had occurred to Carlos more than once that it would be fairly easy to guilt Cecil out of smoking in the apartment, by pointing out the risks of second-hand smoke. But secretly, Carlos liked the smell. His mother and sister had always smoked, and the smell of cigarettes was embedded in the carpets and curtains in the house he grew up in. And now it smelt like Cecil, and it always smelt like home.

 

*****

 

Carlos was alone in the bed. He couldn't sleep. Cecil hadn't come home from work. They'd been expecting this. Re-education was a fact of life for someone who danced so very publicly so very close to the line as Cecil did and Cecil knew when he'd crossed it and knew that he had to. He'd sent Carlos a txt just before his show ended _“stay safe. see you soon.”_

Carlos felt around for his phone and pulled it out from under the duvet. He read the message again, squinting against the small glare of the screen in the darkness. He flicked back through the last few txts he'd had from him. Fragmentary evidence of their existence in _“chinese and a movie tonight? you pick the movie i'll pick up the takeaway”_ and _“somebody said something today and it made me think of you and I missed you even though I saw you this morning – isn't that weird?” and “don't forget to get milk”_. The smell of Cecil was buried in the smell of stale smoke that clung to the bedsheets. It didn't help. It just made more obviously how strangely cold the bed was with only one person in it. If he moved outside of the small pool of warmth his own curled body created he was hit by the shock of cold cotton. He slept so many nights like this before Cecil, but now he couldn't understand how it was possible. How was anyone supposed to sleep in a bed that was so empty and cold? He reached out, stretching his arm across as far as he could without moving from his curled position, and just managed to grasp the cigarette packet, lying abandoned on the bedside table on Cecil's side of the bed. He flicked the box open and sniffed at the cigarettes inside, catching a dry impression of their scratchy, warm haze. He uncurled to sit up slightly, keeping as much of his body as possible in contact with the warm part of the duvet, and pulled one cigarette from the box. He placed the packet back on the table and took the lighter. He held the flame at the tip of his fingers for a minute, feeling the radiation of its warmth, before lighting the orange glow at the tip of the cigarette. The lighter he dropped back on the table, and cigarette he placed softly into Cecil seashell-ashtray and left there to burn down slowly. White tendrils dissociated into the air, filling the room with a heavy, burnt orange smell that was almost like warmth. Eventually, Carlos drifted off to sleep.

 

*****

 

Carlos wasn't alone in the bed when he woke up. Cecil had crept in during the night and had curled right up close to him without waking him at all. There was a violent green-and-yellow bruise across his jaw, the only visible trace that he'd ever been away. He was barely skimming the edge of sleep, breath not reaching any deeper than the very top of his chest and he woke the moment Carlos turned to face him. Carlos reached for the hand that clutched the duvet in a tight fist between them and kissed each of the fingers, soothing them into a loosened grip. Cecil pulled a sharp breath in and sat up, curling his legs into his chest and wincing against some internal hurt as he did so. He glanced with a vague curiosity at two burnt-down butts sitting in the ash tray, one for each night he'd been missing. The ghost-forms of the whole cigarettes remained built out of undisturbed ash and crumpled into meaningless piles when he touched the edge of the ashtray. Carlos curled closer to him, a hand on his foot and his forehead resting against the side of his thigh. Cecil pulled a cigarette out between his lips and lit it. The first drag he pulled in was the deepest breath he'd taken in two days. He relaxed slightly into the pillow behind him, letting one hand fall to cradle Carlos's head.

“I wish you wouldn't.” Said Carlos.

“Let me have my vices,” he replied, pulling the smoke evenly through his aching lungs “what's the point of being alive if you're not going to make any use of it.”

 


End file.
